Model comparison

o3 vs o3-mini

o3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.4 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index. o3-mini costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 41 shared benchmarks.

o3 OpenAI

47.4

Rank #53 Confirmed

o3-mini OpenAI

36.7

Rank #205 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 41 benchmarks with published results for both. o3 scores higher in 8 categories and o3-mini in 1 category; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where o3 leads 48.9 to 27.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Fiction.LiveBench: 88.9% for o3 and 50% for o3-mini.
  • o3-mini is cheaper at $1.10 / $4.40 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $8 for o3.

Side by side

o3 and o3-mini specifications
o3o3-mini
ProviderOpenAIOpenAI
Noometry Index47.436.7
Released2025-04-162024-12-20
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window200K200K
Max output100K100K
Input $ / M tokens$2$1.10
Output $ / M tokens$8$4.40
Results tracked6351

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Category by category

Coding o3 leads

o3: 47.3 (#57), o3-mini: 41.4 (#116)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmarko3o3-mini
Aider Polyglot81.3%60.4%
GSO8.8%1.3%
WeirdML52.4%43.7%
LMArena Coding14081378
CadEval74%54%
SWE-bench Verified62.3%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)58.4%—
SciCode—39.8%
LiveBench Coding—82.7%
ALE-Bench933.55—

Agentic & Tool Use o3 leads

o3: 34.3 (#42), o3-mini: 29.3 (#79)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmarko3o3-mini
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard63%—
GDPval30.8%—
Cybench—22.5%
DeepResearch Bench45.2%—
OSWorld23%—
LMArena Search1144—
METR Time Horizons65.4%—

Reasoning o3 leads

o3: 32.1 (#66), o3-mini: 16.3 (#295)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmarko3o3-mini
ARC-AGI-26.5%3%
SimpleBench53.1%22.8%
ARC-AGI-160.8%34.5%
CritPt1.4%0.3%
Chess Puzzles38%17%
LMArena Hard Prompts14021366
Mystery Game Puzzles29%7%
DTBench84.8%68.8%
LMCA39.7%19%
Epoch Capabilities Index146.88140.35
ForecastBench62.559.6
Kagi LLM Benchmark67.6%—
EnigmaEval13.1%—
LiveBench Reasoning—89.6%
LiveBench Data Analysis—70.6%
LiveBench—75.9%

Math o3 leads

o3: 48.9 (#49), o3-mini: 27.6 (#236)

Math benchmarks
Benchmarko3o3-mini
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)33.3%18.6%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202584.4%76.9%
LMArena Math14261396
MATH Level 597.8%96.5%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)18.7%12.4%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)2.1%4.2%
FrontierMath Tier 4—0%
Omni-MATH71.4%—
LiveBench Math—77.3%

Knowledge o3 leads

o3: 54.5 (#47), o3-mini: 38.3 (#135)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmarko3o3-mini
GPQA Diamond81.8%77%
SimpleQA Verified49.4%15.3%
Confabulations14.4%17.9%
LMArena Expert14031364
Humanity's Last Exam20.3%—
MMLU-Pro85.9%—
GPQA (HELM)75.3%—

Multimodal Not comparable

o3: 40.7 (#35), o3-mini: —

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmarko3o3-mini
LMArena Vision1214—
GeoBench74%—
VPCT52%—

Multilingual o3 leads

o3: 51.9 (#99), o3-mini: 45.9 (#159)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmarko3o3-mini
LMArena Non-English14021319
LMArena Chinese14381379
LMArena French14301333
LMArena German14201303
LMArena Japanese14041286
LMArena Korean13711314
LMArena Russian14071304
LMArena Spanish13951321

Instruction Following o3-mini leads

o3: 73.0 (#122), o3-mini: 75.3 (#67)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmarko3o3-mini
LMArena Instruction Following13681338
LiveBench Instruction Following—84.4%
IFEval86.9%—

Long Context o3 leads

o3: 53.2 (#6), o3-mini: 33.8 (#251)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmarko3o3-mini
Fiction.LiveBench88.9%50%
LMArena Longer Query13721343
CL-bench17.8%—

Writing & Preference o3 leads

o3: 63.7 (#62), o3-mini: 50.4 (#177)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmarko3o3-mini
LMArena Text14101337
LMArena Creative Writing13591286
Short-Story Creative Writing83.9%61.7%
LMArena Multi-Turn14051320
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1676—
WildBench86.1%—
LiveBench Language—50.7%

Frequently asked questions

Is o3 better than o3-mini?

o3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.4 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index. o3-mini costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, o3 or o3-mini?

o3-mini is cheaper. It lists at $1.10 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens; o3 lists at $2 and $8.

Is o3 or o3-mini better for coding?

o3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.3 versus 41.4 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 200K tokens.

How many benchmarks do o3 and o3-mini share?

41 benchmarks have published results for both models. o3 has 63 scored results on Noometry and o3-mini has 51.

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